illeting district. The
motor outfit was late in arriving, but finally start was made. Three
and four guns and caissons were attached to each truck, the truck
loaded with soldiers and packs, then for a thirty kilometer race
through the Marne Department in motorized artillery form. The last
detail did not leave La Tracey until 4 p. m.

The first details arrived at Ville sous La Ferte, a small village in
the Department of Aube. This village was the billeting center for the
2nd Battalion of the regiment. Regimental headquarters was established
at Clairvaux, four kilometers from Ville sous La Ferte. The 1st
Battalion went to Juvancourt, about a kilometer distant.

Farm lands and vineyards surrounded these villages. The inhabitants
were of the quiet peasant type. With nothing of interest and no form
of amusement, Ville sous La Ferte was a quiet place for Battery D. The
battery was divided among a score of barns, lofts, sheds and houses,
covering considerable length of a village street. A grist mill with
its water-wheel and mill-pond was situated near the building in which
the battery office was established. All formations were assembled in
the street in front of the battery office. Difficulty was experienced
during the stay at this place in getting the battery out at all
formations, especially those members who were billeted in the loft of
a barn at the extreme end of the battery street. As a remedy the
battery buglers were given the job of traversing the street each
morning and routing out the fellows.

It was mid-November. The days and evenings were getting damp and
chilly. Fires were comfortable things those days, but heating stoves
were unknown to the peasant homes of Ville sous La Ferte. The
houses were equipped with fire-places. The big question, however,
was to procure fuel. It was all the battery could do to get a supply
of wood from nearby woodlands to supply the needs of the battery
kitchen. At first the fellows started to make raids on the wood pile
that came in for the kitchen, but this soon had to be stopped under
necessity of suspension of the commissary department.

For many of the squads billeted in the barns and sheds there was no
chance for warmth as there were no fire-places. During the damp, cold
nights the only choice the inhabitants of those billets had was to
roll in and keep warm under the blankets.

To chop a tree down in the numbered forests of France was to commit a
crime, so the fellows who w